Imperative cooking: the Christmass plan
rihristmass brings out the socialism in \--British cooks. The prospect of prepar- ing something approaching a true meal for several people to eat together from a dining table is so terrifying to the micro- waving TV snack-dashing cooks of 1984 that it can only be contemplated with the aid of a 'plan'. My local newspaper pub- lished the following strategy in November: Plan ahead for festival fun. NOW is the time to start preparing . . . . to avoid a hectic time nearer the great day . . . . present-buying should be completed this month . . . . Re- member a gift chosen with care — no matter how little it costs— will mean far more to the recipitent [sic] than an expensive item which is quite impersonal . . . . After the gift- buying it's time to buy the Christmas fayre . . . . Week 1 Purchase frozen Christmas bird Make stuffing balls and gravy freeze in family amounts . . . Freeze sauces to make tasty meals with cold turkey e.g. curry, tomatoc, béchamel. Week 2 Freeze well-ripened cheeses . . . . Week 3 Open freeze lemon slices for drinks Make and freeze brandy butter in individual portions. Week 4 Peel, blanch and freeze potatoes for roasting . . . . Freeze freshly ground coffee in measured amounts (keeps perfect- ly) Freeze plenty of ice cubes in a large polythene hag.
This is a modern plan but plans them- selves are not new. Older versions issue orders to arise at four in the morning and light the oven; start the elephantine sprouts on their marathon boil before attending the 8.00 a.m. Holy Communion; make the coffee before lunch — sorry, dinner — and keep it hot in a thermos.
I asked Mr Moore if I could have eight pages of the Spectator to reveal my plan in its full glory but he refused; you will have to make do with excerpts. Plans deal with four matters: long-term preparations, organisation for the day' itself, 'gift' buying and using left-ovens. There will be no left-overs in a well-run kitchen or none that can not be cleared up by a well-run cat and there is no need for long-term prepara- tions.
Since Mr Alan Watkins and I appear to he the only people in the country with sharp knives, I often give knives or, better still, stones as presents. With luck they will be returned the following year. Food also makes an impressive 'gift'. Such a pleasure to watch the fingers trembling au Betjeman at the ribbons and wrappings and then the look of sheer horror as the final layer is removed to reveal a 3Ib fresh bass or a set
of calves' brains.
But the challenge of the year is what to give to a vegetarian. Most Spectator read- ers will have one vegetarian aquaintance. each since there are now one to two million of them in the land (vegetarians, not, to be sure, Spectator readers). I am obsessed with them since I had one recently to stay. She was the latest wife of an old American friend and spent her days skipping in the garden. Skipping is what joggers do when they have hurt their knees jogging. I only have one other jogging friend and he does it at night. Being bashful, he felt he should fully cover himself while jogging and, for reasons we can discuss next year, ordered a tracksuit advertised in the Guardian. Now he has a tracksuit with 'The Guardian' emblazoned on it and consequently has to jog in the dark. No doubt he will soon be knocked over, hurt his knee and wind up bounding up and down over a rope in someone's garden.
Anyway, 'gifts' for vegetarians: health food shops sell blocks of solidified pure vegetable fat intriguingly called 'Nutter'. They are made in Liverpool. A year's supply of Nutter would do. Failing that, you should photocopy and donate a page of your family Vulgate, the Epistle to Timothy chapter iv verses 1 to 5. It's all about dreadful people who listen to spiriti- bus erroris et doctrinis daemoniorum and then lay down rules abstinere a cibis quos Deus creavit ad percipiendum cum gra- tiarum . . . . Quia omnis creatura Dei bona est, et nihil reiciendum quod cum gratiarum actione percipitur . . . . It can look very pretty rolled up like a scroll and tied with a red ribbon, quite suitably craft-like. De- ciphering it provides an educational pas- time, an aid to digestion after the stale kidney bean rissoles au Nutter.
The plan proper starts or. Christmass Eve when you call at the Italian shop to collect the eels which the Neapolitans are, with their customary kindness to animals, permitting to swim in a plastic bath. Buy a couple of pounds. Take them home. Re- move any traces of Vim from your bath and release the eels into it (tepid water will do). Now check the salt cod which has been soaking in your washbasin since the
'You've been drinking.' previous day and change the water. Re- move all the rubbish which customarily
lives in your refrigerator and fill it with
Veuve Clicquot Extra Dry. Put your feet up and listen to Gerontius in place of
dinner. At 11.45 attend the first Mass of Christmass in a carefully chosen church. After an enjoyably sentimental sermon about angels and a dose of Christina Rossetti, you will be ready for the first champagne of Christmas followed by the eels. Take them from the bath and hold them with a towel on a block. Cut off their heads. Gut them and slice them in two-inch pieces. Fry them in olive oil with garlic, then add a little lemon peel and white wine. Serve with more freshly chopped garlic and some home-made bread. Then a slice of chevre, a glass of grappa and bed.
Christmass day starts, in my case, with Mass of the Dawn followed by the only enjoyable drive of the year, to organise the Mummies. They are all eagerly waiting to be kissed — traditional English style. Opening the presents follows. The Mara' mies handle their stones quizzically. Then to the pub to enjoy the complaints of other churchgoers who have not chosen their churches carefully and are now walking encyclopaedias on Latin American ge°' politics or still deaf after an hour of insufferable recorder playing. Back t° base. Lunch is 3/41b of smoked salmon each and lots more champagne. The genera', idea is knock out one particularly talkative Mummy, but since egalitarianism is noW ubiquitous, they all have to be equallY incapacitated or one will feel left out. This done, the afternoon can be sPerl,t peacefully cooking the dinner. We shall have roast peppers in olive oil and the° Brandade: Poach the salt cod and flake it, removing the bones and skin. Pound it with two cloves of garlic in a mortar. Warm half a pint or more of olive oil and, separatelY,, slightly less milk and add them, a drop 01 each alternately to the fish, stirring rapidlY all the time until you have a thick puree' Add pepper and a little lemon juice. Sere, it warm. Making Brandade is excellent exercise — skipping sitting down. After the fish, there will be roast rib of beef with no vegetables but with freshly grated horseradish (any Mummy who rash" ly ventures into the kitchen should be given this job; there is something particular?' moving about the elderly when they erY.:11. Then a salad of endive and finish WI' gorgonzola, roquefort and a ritual argil' ment about the respective merits. Dinner is preceded by a quick excursi°,11. to Benediction and followed by two hours roulette. Before retiring we each eat a ef e of Hilda Page's pickled onions. What sill puts in them, I don't know, but we drift 0,', into a perfect sleep dreaming of tornT e row's breakfast — bubble and squeak (W only yet perfect use to which humans can put brussel sprouts) and duck eggs fried io lots of duck fat.
Digby Anders
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